Where do you meet?

[Clem1640]

Two weeks after Championships, we lost our home, the School District having sold the warehouse which had been our 6th home since the team's founding (and 3rd home in a year). We spent the summer homeless; with machines, parts & robots scattered between donated storage space and mentor's basements (which absolutely hurt us at IRI; we had rookie drivers with no practice opportunity).

The team's students, parents and especially mentors fanned out and beat the local bush for any available space. Since September, we have been working very happily in an empty warehouse very graciously donated by a local company (Waterloo Gardens Inc.). The space is great, but also for sale so there is no sense of permanancy. We did set up a Tenancy Agreement with the sponsor, which defines thier expectations of us and also provides the team with 30 days notice before a move.

The team did incorporate, to protect team assets and also provide an entity to contract liability insurance. We are currently seeking 501(3)(c) status.

We also continue to work towards a more permanent home. This being our 7th home, our definition of "permanent" is two years. We've got some good potentials now, but it was a great deal of work getting to this point.

By the way, despite the loss of school district support and our semi-homelessness, the team has surprisingly thrived. We built two robots this year for the first time ever. We won the Philadelphia Regional as alliance captain (2nd seed/alliance) and also received the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control Award at Philadelphia. We attended the Championship for the first time ever and participated in IRI (albeit totally unprepared). We won Duel on the Delaware last month and our 2nd robot/team was a Finalist at Ramp Riot last Saturday. It was a great year for us. Our best ever. We've been able to recruit a great group of new students (and a new mentor) for the 2012 season. Our training has been solid. We are ready to rock.

Our organization also operates (17) VEX teams and (6) FLL teams. These are full programs engaging well over 100 students.

So we are able to run a very competitive and active robotics program. Sustainability, alas, is a month-to-month issue for us and is dictacted by the space situation. This is okay today. Tomorrow could be different. We live like this.